Smart Device Activations Break Records on Christmas Day

Shoppers said they were going to be more cautious with their spending this holiday season, but that didn’t stop millions of people from putting iPhones, iPads and other smart devices under the Christmas tree.

Flurry detected a record number of smart device activations on December 25 – a whopping 17.5 million. That’s a 332% increase over the average. For those of you who are visual learners. . . .

This beats last years, record-breaking number of 6.8 million, single-day, activations.

Though smartphones usually out-do tablet activations, on Christmas it was a pretty even split with tablets squeaking ahead with 51%. Many of those tablets were iPads but Kindle did very well with their Kindle Fire line.

H-appy Holidays

Flurry worked their magic with the data and decided that Christmas 2012 was also a record-breaking day for app downloads. 328 million on December 25, as compared to the monthly average of 155 per day.

Distimo has more on that – reporting an 87% increase in apps from iTunes compared to the December average. This isn’t as big a jump as last year when we saw app downloads triple, but it’s still a nice bump and I’m sure Apple isn’t complaining.

Flurry found that app downloads were pretty consistent throughout the day, peaking at 10 am and remaining solid through to 10 pm.

Kindle’s by the Fire

While we’re in the holiday tablet mood, here are some fun facts from Amazon that you can use to dazzle your friends at your New Year’s Party:

eBooks

The most gifted Kindle book during the holiday season was “The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail-but Some Don’t,” by Nate Silver.

More than 175,000 exclusive books were added to the Kindle store in 2012.

23 Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) authors each sold over 250,000 copies of their books in 2012. Top sellers this year include Hugh Howey, author of the New York Times best seller “WOOL,” Stephanie Bond, author of “Stop the Wedding!,” the #2 best-selling book in the Kindle Store in December, and Barbara Freethy and CJ Lyons—both members of the Kindle Million Club.

Video and Apps

Amazon’s digital media selection grew to over 23 million movies, TV shows, songs, magazines, books, audiobooks, and popular apps and games in 2012, an increase from 19 million in 2011.